But Murray insisted tennis was risking a tragedy by not suspending play under the searing sun.

“It’s definitely something that you maybe have to look at a little bit,” said the Scot. “As much as it’s easy to say the conditions are safe, it only takes one bad thing to happen.

“And it looks terrible for the whole sport when people are collapsing – ball kids are collapsing, people in the stands are collapsing. That’s ­obviously not great.

“And I know when I went out to hit before the match, the conditions at 2:30pm, 3pm were very, very, very tough conditions. Anyone’s going to struggle in that kind of heat.

“Whether it’s safe or not, I don’t know. You just have got to be very careful these days. There’s been some issues in other sports with players having heart attacks or collapsing.

“In this heat, that’s when you’re really pushing it to your limits, you don’t want to see anything bad happen to anyone.”

Ice feeling: Zhang Ze uses an ice-packed towel to keep cool during day two (Image: Reuters)

Dancevic continued to play but lost in three sets and said: “I think it’s inhumane, I don’t think it’s fair to anybody – to the players, to the fans, to the sport, when you see players pulling out of matches, passing out.

“Until somebody dies, they’ll just keep going on with it and putting matches on in this heat.”